CHRIS COONS' NUMBERS CRUNCH

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

Sloppy campaign finance reporting from Christopher A.
Coons, the Democratic candidate for New Castle County
executive, has his political foes, Democratic and
Republican, working themselves into a lather.

No one has pounced yet. Instead, for months now the
cloaks have been twirling and the daggers flashing in
the back parlors of politics. Unsigned memos have been
circulated, strategy plotted, and efforts made to plant
stories in the press, leaving no fingerprints to be
traced back to the planters.

Everyone has been waiting for everyone else to go
first.

Sherry L. Freebery and Richard Korn, candidates along
with Coons for the Democratic nomination, and
Christopher J. Castagno, the Republican candidate, all
have an interest in seeing Coons spattered in this
rancid campaign to succeed County Executive Thomas P.
Gordon, a two-term Democrat who cannot run again.

With the election colored darkly by federal
indictments, ethics and integrity matter, so it would
not be good if a candidate were to be pinned with the
charge of trying to pull a fast one with campaign
finance reporting.

Coons, who is running on the ethics issue himself,
finds himself dealing with a flawed year-end finance
report for 2000 for his successful campaign for County
Council president. By law, all candidates must file
accounts of their contributions and expenditures with
the state elections commissioner. The reports are
available to the public -- and to rival campaigns.

The cover page is a summary statement of the campaign
account, listing the beginning balance, the total amount
of contributions, expenditures, loans and loan
repayments detailed in the report, and the ending
balance.

Instead of relying on the campaign treasurer to fill
out the cover page, Coons did it himself, and as he
acknowledges, he muffed it. He is a lawyer, not an
accountant. As such, he should know that a lawyer who
represents himself is said to have a fool for a client,
and it appears the same goes for a candidate acting as
his own treasurer.

"The cover page I did wrong," Coons said.

Coons' most serious error was his treatment of
$104,717 he personally loaned to his campaign. He should
have considered it as money he had available to spend,
adding it to his contributions, but he subtracted it,
instead, treating it like a debt and leaving himself
with a negative balance of -$93,738.

The campaign did not catch the problem until it came
time to file the 2001 report, Coons said. His treasurer
recalculated the 2000 ending balance to be in the black
at $22,695 and used it for the beginning balance on the
2001 report. It had the effect of making it appear that
Coons' campaign finances magically went from being
almost $94,000 in the hole to being in the clear. His
political foes noticed.

Coons says his campaign filed an amended report for
2000 in March 2002, but Elections Commissioner Frank B.
Calio said Thursday afternoon his office had found no
record of it.

As Coons heard of the gathering political assault on
his bookkeeping, he had the amended report reconstructed
late last month. It is dated June 25, but Calio said he
has not seen that one, either.

Even the amended version, shown to Delaware
Grapevine, does not answer all questions. It shows Coons
lending his campaign $5,000 less than originally
reported, his explanation being that the campaign
checkbook shows the money neither coming in nor going
out. It is in balance without it.

"I may have thought I contributed more to my campaign
than I did," Coons said.

Coons eventually forgave the campaign loans, but the
finance reports he submitted since 2000 do not show it.
The loans simply vanish from the pages. Once his amended
report is on file, however, it will show the loans being
canceled.

If there is anything more to come about Coons'
campaign finance records, his political rivals can do it
themselves.